Book Hippo

Friday, August 23, 2013

Weather Fashion

So it's hot. Real hot. I've been outside twice today and came back with sweat dripping down my face. I don't like the heat, it's so uncomfortable and I like the cold or cool weather.

I have a lot of reasons. One being, that I can wear nice clothes. In sweltering summer, if I wear nice clothes, they get ruined by sweat. In fall and spring, those clothes are warm and don't need to be washed as much.

Besides, at my age, I'm finding that I suffer in the heat. I've been to the emergency ward three times due to heat problems. I guess my old brain is cooked enough.

My other season that I find hard is the winter. Mostly because of the ice on the pavement. The cold isn't too bad but like summer, why bother wearing nice clothes when they're covered up with a heavy coat.

I'm waiting for an inventor to come up with clothes that will keep someone warm and be as thin as regular clothes. That will happen someday, like flying cars, but I don't know if I will be alive.

I would really like to wear nice stylish clothes all year round but for now I'll have to just use fall and spring for my fashion outlet.

Monday, August 12, 2013

Madeleine

Madeleine. I hated my name as a child. That is the fault of school yard bullies who would look at me and say "What kind of name is that?" Just because Madeleine is a French name and I grew up in a very English place. It made me feel like a freak.

On the other hand. I always liked it when someone else was named Madeleine. Like the book Madeleine. We read that in grade two and I felt the teacher was reading it just to me. Then there was Madeleine L'Engels. Madeleine Kahn. Remember her?

They made me feel I wasn't alone in the world. Of course when I moved out to Eastern Canada, I couldn't have picked a better place than Ottawa. Madeleines abound out here, so close to Quebec. I even have found a cousin named Madeleine McLaughlin.

I was so excited to be close to people who didn't think Madeleine was a freak name that I even suggested to other Madeleines that we form a group. So silly. These women didn't need a group.

But all these experiences have taught me how narrow and mean those kids were back then. Re-thinking it, I realize it wasn't everyone that picked on me, just a few.

Just one more Madeleine. Madeleine McCann. I urge everyone to say a prayer for this little girl to bring her home to her parents. I'll put up a link you can go to for her.
http://www.findmadeleine.com/home.html

Now I like my name. I'm not a freak for being named Madeleine. I've learned everyone's name is beautiful. We're all beautiful. Except bullies.

Friday, August 2, 2013

Otzi The Iceman

I find history fascinating not just for what it does tell me but for what it doesn't. Take Otzi, the world's oldest 'cold case'. We know Otzi was murdered. In our terms, it makes him an 'innocent' victim, nobody deserves to be murdered, right?

I would argue that we don't know anything about the time he lived in. Maybe he was a hellraiser and their way of dealing with that was to kill. Maybe. This was way before the Jews came up with 'Thou shalt not kill'.

I'm just saying that we have no way to know whether Otzi was a good man or bad man, or whether those Judeo-Christian terms meant anything at all to the people who lived back then. Maybe Otzi was a magician and they feared him. Is that why they waited until they got him alone?

And speaking of alone, when does a man travel alone through this kind of terrain? Not trade, I would suppose because they'd have animals to carry their goods. Was he cast out? In a lot of tribes, the only people who are alone are those whom the tribe have disowned because they're bad.

On the other hand, Otzi was well dressed which might mean that he had some 'riches' of whatever that may have meant back then.

I know these are a lot of questions, but I think most authors ask questions like these, probably about everyone they think of. People on a plane when it flies over etc.

But for Otzi, it just makes him more fascinating as it makes the times he lived in more interesting. Will we ever know exactly what kind of society he came from, the rules and mores of the group? Probably not.

It's a great thing to think about and some author, somewhere, will surely write a fiction book about his life.